Setting Ad Policies for Videos

You can use the Advertising module to edit ad request policies for your videos. You can also use the Advertising module to edit ad request policies of your players.

• Enabling ad requests for videos
• Editing ad policies for videos
• Setting ad key/value pairs for videos

Enabling ad requests for videos

To enable ad requests for one or more videos in the Advertising module:

1. Select All Videos in the Navigation Pane on the left side of the screen.
2. Select the videos for which you want to enable ads from the data grid in the center of the screen. To select multiple videos, hold down the Ctrl or Shift keys while selecting videos.
3. In the toolbar, select Ads On.

The status of the selected video appears in the Ads Supported field of the Details Pane on the right side of the screen. If ads are enabled for the video, the value is true. If ads are not enabled, the value is false.

If ads are not enabled for a video, then no ad requests will be made from that video, regardless of the ad policy settings of any videos being played by that player.

Editing ad policies for videos

To edit ad policies for one or more videos in the Advertising module:

1. Select All Videos in the Navigation Pane on the left side of the screen.
2. Select the videos for which you want to edit ad policies from the data grid in the center of the screen. To select multiple videos, hold down the Ctrl or Shift keys while selecting videos.
3. In the toolbar, click Edit. The Batch Edit Videos dialog opens. The title bar displays the number of videos selected.

4. From the General Settings tab of the Batch Edit Videos dialog, you can:

• Allow ads to be requested for the selected videos. You can select Yes or No under Ads may be requested from this video. This has the same effect on the video as clicking Ads On or Ads Off in the action bar. If you select No, then no ad requests will be made from this video, regardless of the ad policy settings of the player.
• Force an ad request for the selected videos. This causes an ad request on every playback of the video.
  • Note: The two settings above can also be configured from the Media module. It is important to understand that the selections you make in Media module have the same effect on your videos as the selections made in the Advertising module, and vice versa. The Advertising settings are shared (i.e. they are the same settings) regardless of which module you set them from. You can view or edit these settings in either of the two modules. If you make a change to these settings in one module, that change will be reflected in the other module.
• Set advertising key/value pairs.
  
  You can also set cue points from the Cue Points tab. Click here for more information on setting cue points.

5. When you have finished editing your videos' ad policies, click Save Changes.

Setting ad key/value pairs

Ad requests can include key/value pairs that aid the ad server in selecting an appropriate ad to serve. You can set key/value pairs at the video level and at the player level. All applicable key/value pairs are appended to the URL in the ad request.

You can also set a video's key/value pairs by using the Media API, or by using FTP batch provisioning, with the ad-keys attribute in the title element of your FTP batch provisioning manifest.

To set ad key/value pairs for one or more videos in the Advertising module:

1. Select the videos for which you want to edit ad policies.
2. In the action bar, click Edit. The Batch Edit Videos dialog opens.
3. In the Key/Value Pair field, enter one or more key/value pairs. The format is key=value. If you use more than one key/value pair, separate them with semi-colons, or by whatever other character your ad server uses as a delimiter for key/value pairs. For example:
   category=news;news=headlines;promo=sponsorship
   You can add up to 1800 characters of key/value pairs in the Key/Value Pair field.
   Note that if you are editing more than one video, and the existing key/value pairs for all the selected videos are not identical, the Key/Value Pair field displays <Multiple values> as a reminder.
4. If you are editing a video that already has key/value pairs:

• Select Append Key/Value Pairs if you want to add these key/value pairs to the ones that already exist.
• Select Overwrite Key/Value Pairs if you want to replace your existing key/value pairs with these new ones.

5. Click Save Changes.

What's Next...

Read more about:

• Setting ad policies for players